First Ally’s] squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the battle would have been the same.’ 18
Mention should also be made of the key role played by the First Ally’s cryptologists. Britain’s near hopeless military position in 1940 was greatly strengthened by the growing ability to read most of Germany’s encoded radio signals and the accompanying directives. This ability, which was to be perfected at the secret intelligence centre at Bletchley Park, had been greatly facilitated by the pioneering work of the First Ally’s specialists, who had presented the British in July 1939 not only with two working replicas of the first-generation Enigma machine, but also with the mathematical formulas for reconstructing its signals. 19
Once Britain had survived the onslaught at home, it could afford a modest show of strength abroad. In December 1940, Lt.Gen. Wavell moved against a far larger Italian army in the Libyan desert. The First Ally’s Carpathian Brigade, which reached Tobruk in August 1941, formed almost one quarter of Allied troops in North Africa.
Most importantly, the American President felt confident enough to launch his clandestine programme for supplying the ‘fortress of democracy’. His actions were particularly welcome to the First Ally, which, with the growing prospect of American involvement, was able to consider the possibility of ultimate liberation. The text of the Atlantic Charter, which contained a clause condemning territorial aggrandizement, looked particularly pertinent. If it meant anything at all, it meant that all the territory which had been seized in 1939 would eventually be restored under Western auspices.
Nonetheless, Stalin also felt confident enough to make further gains. Whilst Germany was preoccupied in the West, Soviet troops occupied andannexed the three Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia – and large tracts of Romania. They had Berlin’s approval. During the currency of the Nazi–Soviet Pact, eight countries were absorbed by German aggression and five by Soviet aggression.
On 22 June 1941, the Third Reich attacked its erstwhile associate, the Soviet Union, and with the launch of Operation Barbarossa started the German–Soviet War – the most extensive and the most savage of modern military campaigns. To begin with, the Wehrmacht carried all before it. Within a matter of weeks, millions of Soviet prisoners had been taken; Vilno, Minsk, and Kiev had been captured; and, using its hold on the Baltic states, the Wehrmacht laid siege to Leningrad. By Christmas, a Soviet collapse seemed imminent.
Almost to a man, Western commentators announced that Germany had attacked ‘Russia’. The general assumption, worldwide, was that the territory seized by the Wehrmacht was somehow Russian by right or by ethnic composition. In reality, the difference between the ‘Soviet Union’ and ‘Russia’ was even greater, and every bit as important, as that between ‘the United Kingdom’ and ‘England’. Yet it was almost universally ignored. The Nazis also ignored it, boasting that they were conquering ‘ Russland ’. For once, Soviet propaganda was not to blame. All the Soviet maps of the period marked a clear boundary line dividing Soviet Russia (the RSFSR) from the other Soviet republics which made up the USSR. They showed beyond any doubt that the lands which the Wehrmacht entered in June 1941 did not form part of Russia but of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, and Ukraine. In the end, one can only fall back on the argument of inertia and complacency. ‘Russia’ had been the accepted shorthand for the Tsarist Empire during the First World War; and it now stuck as the accepted shorthand for the Soviet Union during the Second World War and after. For the peoples who inhabited the disputed region, the consequences were dire.
Even so, Operation Barbarossa brought significant benefits to the beleaguered First Ally. With
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